US Department of Justice

Office of Community Oriented Policing Services

 Fact Sheet www.cops.usdoj.gov

Training Fact Sheet

The COPS Office has a series of requirements for the 

development and delivery of in-person and online training. 

These requirements can be found in the two COPS Office 

curriculum guides: (1) Online Curriculum Standards and 

Review: Process Guide, https://cops.usdoj.gov/pdf/training/

Online_Curriculum_Process_Guide.pdf, and (2) In-Person 

Curriculum Standards and Review: Process Guide, https://cops.

usdoj.gov/pdf/training/In_Person_Curriculum_Standards_

Guide.pdf. The guides were established to provide guidance 

to COPS Office training providers and program managers on 

instructional design, promising practices, and the process by 

which the COPS Office will review and approve curricula. 

The COPS Office trainings are national in scope and should 

have a specific law enforcement audience: executives, first line 

supervisors, line officers, dispatchers, joint community and 

officers, etc. COPS Office training supports the needs of the 

law enforcement field and strives to increase public safety.

The training goals of the COPS Office are as follows:

 Establish a common process for the development 

of COPS Office training initiatives. 

 Manage quality control through a series of review 

and approval checkpoints.

 Standardize content, style, format, and quality.

 Establish clear outcome expectations of training 

initiatives.

 Maintain training relevance for the field.

 Prepare training for accreditation through national 

law enforcement training accreditation programs.

The COPS Office defines training as the teaching and learning 

activities carried out for the primary purpose of helping 

members of an organization acquire and apply the knowledge, 

skills, abilities, and attitudes needed by a particular job or 

organization. Training is driven by specific goals and 

objectives; it is not a single event but rather an ongoing 

process that requires continuous self-reflection and evaluation. 

Learning outcomes and objectives. Objectives describe 

what learners should be able to know and do after training. 

Learning outcomes establish the criteria by which the training 

will be judged a success. Training objectives and learning 

outcomes should be aligned with an employee’s position and 

with the organization’s goals and mission. 

Self-reflection and evaluation. Self-reflection should be 

a conscious process whereby trainees critically analyze the 

training materials and test their own understanding and 

retention; it is an internal check on the progress and outcomes 

of the training. Evaluation is the external check; it should 

consist of setting goals in accordance with the learning outcomes and objectives and conducting pre- and posttraining testing and a final course evaluation to ensure those 

goals are met.

Training materials. Guides, webinars, articles, conference 

presentations, podcasts, videos, blogs, and newsfeeds (to 

provide a few examples) can serve as support material in 

trainings or as stand-alone materials to increase knowledge, 

but on their own they cannot be defined as training. 

The COPS Office also has a series of requirements that 

instructors must meet prior to becoming instructors for 

COPS Office courses and for the duration of their instructor 

tenure. Those requirements can be found in the COPS 

Office's Instructor Quality Assurance Guide, https://cops.usdoj.

gov/pdf/training/Instructor_Quality_Assurance_Guide.pdf.

Contact the COPS Office

For questions related to the development and delivery of 

in-person or online training, please contact the COPS Office 

Response Center at 800-421-6770.

March 2018